FEATURED ARTICLES ABOUT COMANCHE - PAGE 5

As a good soldier, Gen. Gordon Sullivan didn't contradict his superiors Wednesday in testimony to Congress. But the Army chief of staff made clear he supports a program vital to Connecticut's defense business -- the Comanche helicopter. "It is a 21st-century weapons system built by 21st-century manufacturing techniques," Sullivan told members of the House National Security Committee. "I must add the Comanche to modernize the fleet to do what we need to do." The armed reconaissance helicopter is being developed by a team led by Stratford-based Sikorsky Aircraft and Philadelphia-based Boeing Helicopter.

Between 1865 and 1871, nine children in Texas were abducted by Comanches and adopted into the tribes. One of the boys was Adolph Korn, great-great-great uncle of Scott Zesch, who has drawn on family sources and archival histories to write "The Captured: A True Story of Abduction by Indians on the Texas Frontier" (St. Martin's Press, $26.95). Zesch had heard family stories about Korn, who became what some anthropologists call a "white Indian," or assimilated captive. After three years with the Comanches, Korn resisted being forcibly returned to his family by the Army, preferring Native American ways, and became a stranger in the white world.

The Senate Armed Services Committee agreed in a closed session Thursday to eliminate all funding for the Comanche helicopter in the next fiscal year, mirroring a key subcommittee's decision earlier this week. The decision, confirmed by a Senate source, sets up a conflict with the House, which this month approved $433 million for the Army's next-generation light helicopter. The helicopter is being developed by Sikorsky Aircraft of Stratford, Conn., and Boeing Corp. Differences between the two houses will have to be worked out in a House-Senate conference on the defense bills.

The Army's two top officials are upbeat that their superiors at the Pentagon will support plans to revamp the Comanche helicopter program so vital to Stratford-based Sikorsky Aircraft. Gen. Gordon Sullivan, the Army's highest-ranking uniformed officer, touted the virtues of the futuristic helicopter Thursday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. And his boss, Secretary of the Army Togo West, told the committee he thinks the secretary of defense will go along with a plan to build six additional test helicopters in the next five years.

The Pentagon and White House won't decide until after the Nov. 8 election whether to cancel the Comanche helicopter program -- or any other weapons systems. The Comanche, to be built by Stratford-based Sikorsky Aircraft in partnership with the Boeing Co., is in a tenuous position, according to Connecticut congressional aides. But they said it's too early to say what the fate of the program will be. The Comanche was one of nine weapons systems being considered by Deputy Defense Secretary John Deutch for cancellation or major cuts.

Comanche Moon By Larry McMurtry, Simon & Schuster, $28.50, 752 pp West Texas in the mid-1800s could be a brutal, forbidding place. Yet Larry McMurtry keeps taking us there, and lots of us keep following him, not so much for the venue, but for the company he keeps. And engaging company it is, too, in "Comanche Moon," the final entry in the "Lonesome Dove" series that roped McMurtry a Pulitzer Prize and gave birth to a TV miniseries franchise. The Texas llano is a large, grassy, almost treeless plain, and if you pick up this book, you'd better get used to it. McMurtry uses a full 752 pages to further catalog the adventures of Woodrow Call, Augustus McCrae and the rest of the Texas Rangers.

A $3.1 billion contract for final pre-production work on the Comanche helicopter program will help Sikorsky Aircraft stay competitive, and should add a couple hundred jobs to the company's Connecticut payroll. But the best news for Sikorsky may be that, after years of delays and questions, the Comanche program seems to be firmly on track for assembly of the first service-ready aircraft to begin in 2006. Sikorsky, its 50-50 partner the Boeing Co., and the Army formally signed paperwork for the next phase of the program Thursday afternoon at the Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala. -- home of the Army's Comanche office.

By Tom Lewis Tom Lewis is a technology consultant who lives in Colebrook. He is a 1960s Army veteran and was a civilian member of a group on the future of the Army at the Army War College in the early 1980s., February 29, 2004

The Army's decision, announced Monday, to cancel the Comanche helicopter program was the right one -- even though it will cause pain to the 700 Sikorsky employees who work on Comanche in Connecticut. The Comanche was a classic story of a major military procurement gone bad, worse than the proverbial $900 hammer because the hammer would, at least, be useful. In 1983, the United States faced the threat of war with the Soviet Union's arsenal of tanks and artillery. Then, the Comanche might have made sense.

A key Senate panel breathed new life into the Comanche helicopter Wednesday, even though it cut funding for the scout helicopter and four other tactical aircraft programs. The panel also agreed to finance research and development for a future attack submarine program. All of these projects are important to the Connecticut defense industry, which stands to reap billions of dollars and keep thousands of defense workers employed. Final action by Congress could come in the next few weeks.

The day after the Army announced plans to kill the Comanche helicopter, the top manager for the Sikorsky-Boeing program headed to Alabama to meet with Army officials on what lies ahead and Connecticut's senators met with the governor to plot efforts to keep the long-troubled program alive. Army officials told state lawmakers that the service's revamped budget request for 2005 -- along with scuttling Comanche -- would include 15 additional Black Hawk helicopters to be built by Sikorsky Aircraft in Stratford.